Elon Musk's ambition to turn X into a WeChat-like everything app is doomed, predicts the man building his own "theme-based" super app, called Super.com.
Musk has long boasted about his plans to move X (formerly Twitter) beyond its microblogging beginnings into an app that does everything, including an array of financial services.
But, Super.com CEO Hussein Fazal tells Finextra he is sceptical that such an all-encompassing proposition can work in North America. Instead, he predicts that we will witness the rise of theme-based super apps that offer a host of services that could be provided separately but are tied together through a unifying theme.
Uber is building a mobility-based super app; Google Maps a location-based version; and Super.com a saving, earning and credit building-based platform.
Founded six years ago by Fazal and former Google engineer Henry Shi as Snaptravel, Super.com began life as a text-based service to help people find discounted hotel rooms.
Fazal says the company found that the majority of users were lower income, using debit cards and with no to low Fico scores. In the US, he set out to add a series of complimentary services.
Chief among these is Super Pay, a virtual and physical "hybrid credit-debit" card that users link to their bank account. Instead of checking the person's credit, the company bases their spending limit on the account balance. Instead of debiting the customer's account for each transaction, Super.com takes payment for purchases at the end of each billing cycle.
This means that customers can build credit and get cashback - without spending money that they do not have.
While the hotels business and Super Pay were built from the ground up, Super.com has also struck partner deals to offer users discounts on insurance and gas prices and the ability to earn money for playing games and taking surveys.
The proposition has proved popular: Super.com claims to have been used for over $2 billion in sales and bookings worldwide, saving tens of millions of users a combined $200 million.
The firm recently bucked the tech investment scene's prevailing gloom to raise $60 million in equity investment led by Inovia Capital at a "significantly" increased valuation on a 2021 Series B.
Key to the success, says Fazal, is listening to customers and providing them with services that they want and a bridge between these services - all delivered in a frictionless way and at the optimal time.
Super.com uses AI to analyse user behaviour and then personalise their experience. For example, says Fazal, if a customer is filling up their gas tank with Super Pay, it can prompt them via alert, or simply by rearranging the app home screen, to take advantage of the discount offering.
As he prepared to host the company's townhall later that day, Fazal shared some customer feedback that he believes shows that his vision is paying off: Whitney, who found the app looking for a hotel, decided to apply for the card, then earned $85 playing a game, which she used, via her card, to book another hotel room.
Fazal believes that this kind of linkage has huge potential, especially in a country with massive income inequality and 183 million Americans that are low to middle income.
Simply put, he says: "We want to help these customers get more from life."